Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a 22-year-old law student, was elected at the weekend. The new darling of the country’s National Front has announced herself as the ‘spokeswoman’ for France’s youth.

She will be sworn in as the MP for Carpentras, in the south-east Vaucluse area, at the end of the month. The seat is symbolic for her party, as it was there that it was implicated in the desecration of a Jewish cemetery.

Winner: Marion Marechal-Le Pen secured the National Front a parliament seat last night

Miss Marechal-Le Pen campaigned on an
anti-immigrant, anti-Europe and anti-globalisation agenda. ‘If the
elites listened, they would understand why French youth, to which I
belong, is joining our ranks,’ she said.

Mr Le Pen, who turns 84 this week,
was in Carpentras to toast his granddaughter’s victory. His daughter,
who leads the party he founded, failed to win a parliamentary seat,
losing by 118 votes to her Socialist opponent. She has demanded a
recount.

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The party’s only other successful candidate was lawyer Gilbert Collard, who took the southern Gard department.

'Politics can be as genetic as art or music,' Jean-Marie Le Pen said of his granddaughter this month. 'It's the proof of a good race. Those who accuse us of nepotism are imbeciles.'

Delivering a toned-down version of her party's hardline policies to a younger generation of voters, while saying she does not back all the National Front's ideas, Marechal-Le Pen says her success shows the party is becoming mainstream.

Limelight: Marine Le Pen had her thunder stolen from her young niece

'If the elites listened, they would understand why French youth, to which I belong, is joining our ranks,' she said in a victory address, vowing to speak out in parliament for national sovereignty and for giving priority to French nationals.

She added: 'I am happy to the spokeswoman for this French youth that tomorrow will be spearhead new hope in the shape of the National Front.

'6.4 million French voters have already joined us (in presidential elections) and it's just the beginning.'

Party founder: Jean-Marie Le Pen

The far-right's new face insists she is not her grandfather's puppet, but she was careful to place security and immigration - his two key themes - at the heart of her campaign.

Born on December 10, 1989, in the affluent suburb of Saint Cloud, west of Paris, where much of the Le Pen family lives in a mansion, Marechal-Le Pen joined the party aged just 17 and went on to try her luck in regional and municipal elections.

She has remained active in party politics through her postgraduate studies in public law, following the same academic route as her former paratrooper grandfather, who was a more stately 27 when he first entered parliament in 1956.

Her grandfather, who founded the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party, turned 84 this week.

His party won 35 seats in 1986 only to lose them all after proportional representation was scrapped.

It had only one other since, in 1997, but the result was cancelled shortly afterwards.

Family celebrations among France's far-Right dynasty were slightly marred however by the fact that Marine Le Pen, Mr Le Pen's daughter and FN leader, lost a bitterly close battle in the constituency of Hénin Beaumont in the northern Pas de Calais.

Miss Le Pen lost by just 118 votes to a Socialist, and called for a recount.

Despite her personal defeat, the FN leader described her niece's entrance into parliament as a 'huge success' for her party that had 'finally smashed a glass ceiling in place for the past 25 years'.

'The new make-up of (French) political life is underway. Tonight the UMP is paying for its ideological contradictions and its political compromises.'

Her father said he had mixed feelings. 'A part of me is rejoicing and another is in pain,' he said. The other far-Right MP was flamboyant lawyer Gilbert Collard in the southern Gard department.

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France's far right keeps it in the family as Le Pen the younger becomes first National Front MP for 30 years